This alleged suicide has me baffled and confused. Jamey was an "out" teenager who even recorded an "It Gets Better" video back in May. Nothing makes sense. The mother granted comments to the media the day after supposedly finding her son dead? That's just weird, to me. She was over her grief quickly enough to grant interviews?No details on the means or method of death have been released. It's all weird. R.I.P. Jamey.

[link]The bullying continued,http://www.buffalonews.com/city/schools ... 563538.ece[/link]. He had transitioned into high school."I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens," he wrote Sept. 9. "What do I have to do so people will listen to me?"Just over one week later, Jamey was found dead outside his home of an apparent suicide.On Saturday night, he posted a lyric from Lady Gaga's song "The Queen" on his Facebook page: "Don't forget me when I come crying to heaven's door."Then around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Jamey posted two final messages to his main public Tumblr blog. One said he really wanted to see his great-grandmother, who had recently died, and one offered thanks to Lady Gaga.That was his last entry.His was the second suicide at that high school since 2010. There is literally an epidemic of suicide among our young people. This week we have set out 1,100 flags in our Suicide Awareness Week. That is the estimated number of college students who will commit suicide this academic year. It is believed that one in every twelve college students has made [link]concrete plans for how to commit suicide,http://www.dailycampus.com/commentary/e ... -1.2598949[/link]. If today has been an ordinary day, twelve people between the ages of 15 and 24 have committed suicide or will do so before the bell tolls midnight.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

Re relatives giving interviews after a horrendous event has occurred. It's as if they clamor for the spotlight. I am disgusted by it. Why would I want to discuss -- for entertainment -- the worst things that ever happened to me?

Re relatives giving interviews after a horrendous event has occurred. It's as if they clamor for the spotlight. I am disgusted by it. Why would I want to discuss -- for entertainment -- the worst things that ever happened to me?Well, thank you, old and wise muse.Makes no sense. If it were a normal parents kid, said would be be kicking 'em off the lawn, So, do we know how he allegedly died?

(from Tolland's link)In fact, when the family went to its usual camping spot this past weekend, Jamey seemed happy. Even taunts from peers didn't seem to phase him."He used to cry about it, be sad and angry," Rodemeyer said. "But lately, he's been blowing them off, or at least we thought he was."Parents (well, everyone) need to be taught that this is a HUGE red flag.

A comment on that poster from Suicide Awareness: it probably under-emphasizes the role that [link]hopelessness,http://www.suicide.org/hopelessness-a-d ... -sign.html[/link] plays in leading young people to think that the only solution available to them is suicide. In a small-scale study done by a student of mine, African-American students who had thought about committing suicide or had gone so far as to make a concrete plan cited hopelessness more frequently than any other reason for their considering suicide. Some were depressed and being treated for depression, but the larger number might not have fulfilled psychiatric criteria for clinical depression. This is important because it has to do with an enormous social change.For years the suicide rate for African-Americans was well below that of majority non-Hispanic whites -- about half the white rate. Suicide was even less likely for African-American youth. That remains true for African-American young women, but the rate for African-American young men in that vulnerable 15-24 year age group is rising faster than the suicide rate for any other part of the population. To the sociologist this signals that suicide is a social problem as well as a personal problem. To many young African-American men, it appears rational to have little hope for their future. Their unemployment rate is today the highest of any group in our population. These young people are not necessarily candidates for medication by anti-depressants; their problem has to be solved by positive social and economic change.There is good reason to think that, in general, hopelessness plays a larger role than we might have thought. We have a tendency to think of suicidal people as clinically depressed and to try to treat them for depression. The college students that my student interviewed usually did not think of depression as their main problem: it was fighting an unfair system that was their main problem, and they expected to lose the fight. For Jamey, the incessant bullying -- which nobody seemed able to stop or even care about -- was probably what led him to think that suicide was his only option -- a permanent solution for a temporary problem.It was perhaps hopelessness that led Teddy Graubard to leap from a window in the Dalton School. He had just been caught cheating on a Latin test. An athlete and brilliant student with Asperger's Syndrome, [link]he thought his life had already ended before he leaped,http://nymag.com/news/features/66285/[/link].

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

Re: Suicide... I can understand the hopelessness and the sense of just giving up that many feel when they think they have no other choice. I first tried to take my own life at the age of 14. I still have a nice scar from the slice along my wrist. And no, I didn't go across. I did it right, went down the arm. Luckily (or unluckily depending on how you look at it), my veins are in some weird positions and I missed most of them. I was cutting up a chicken, helping get dinner ready. My mother convinced herself the knife "slipped" and that it was an accident. It wasn't. It was an overwhelming urge to just stop the pain. I cannot even imagine the pain that Jamey was going through. I can understand why he did it though. I have cut myself just to feel a different kind of pain, but it always comes back. I have taken overdoses, gotten into car "accidents", "fallen" down stairs. I even one time held a gun in my hand. But I couldn't figure out how to take off the safety. For anyone that says suicidal thoughts or attempts are just cries for attention... for the most part they aren't. The pain is very real, searingly real. The feeling of hopelessness is a bottomless pit that you are falling in. The loneliness, even when surrounded by people, is palpable and crushing. These things are what keeps that thought in my head. It is possible it's also what drives many others, also. We put on a brave face to the world. Pretend that everything is fine or getting better. We have learned to say what people want to hear. But it's not the truth, really. Our society is an absolute wreck. We espouse how we are a free society. How in America, we accept people how they are. And for some people that is actually true. But for many, that acceptance is only if you fall into their own narrow definition of what is acceptable. Any difference whatsoever is criticized, demonized, ostracized and any number of other "ize" words that can come to your mind. It makes me sick to my stomach and makes me want to rail against the injustice that I see. But can you guess what happens when I do speak up? I am called names, shunned, belittled... and it gets tiring. I am now under the care of a Psychiatrist and go to therapy. The urges have lessened, only because I have learned how to cope and have found other outlets. The medications help dull the urges. And I have my dogs. They are my true lifesavers. Not my family, not my friends. But those furry little beasts that keep my feet warm at night and chew up my shoes. But the thoughts are still there and probably always will be. My plea? The point of this post? None really. I just wanted to give you an inside view that statistics and studies can't.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Oh, Jez. I can't understand that, but I do love you. You're a valuable member of this planet. Don't you ever kill yourself. I don't want to ever, ever, EVER hear that you've taken your life. If you even think about it, you contact me ASAP.

Re: Suicide... ...My plea? The point of this post? None really. I just wanted to give you an inside view that statistics and studies can't.Thank you. We know that it helps when people recognize that they are not alone in their pain. I think you have helped some people today, if only to recognize that suicide is not an issue at the fringe of society that can safely be ignored.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

I have cut myself just to feel a different kind of pain, but it always comes back. I have taken overdoses, gotten into car "accidents", "fallen" down stairs. I even one time held a gun in my hand. But I couldn't figure out how to take off the safety.I was suicidal basically from the age of 12 until I was around 30 at least much of the time, also to the point of self-destructive and self-injuring behavior. The closest I got to a direct suicide attempt (as opposed to doing highly dangerous things with a likelihood of death) was putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. I got the gun from a friend and had stated my intention, so I was pretty sure it wasn't loaded, but I didn't check, either.After a series of increasingly awful events around the age of 30, I ended up in a psych ward on a temporary hold after calling myself in, and oddly, had the best time I'd had in years. After I'd more or less stabilized and checked out, I noticed that the depression subsided when I hadn't been on drugs. While my depressive phases started at a time long before I did drugs, it seems that continuing to do them had basically prolonged the situation. What actually precipitated my final wigout, though, was Paxil. For some reason, it kicked me into a manic state of sorts, which persisted after I stopped using it. Depakote kept me too whacked to do much of anything, but probably stopped me from harming myself in that state. Eventually, I tapered off the psychiatric medications, too. For whatever reason, the depression has never come back, even when I've experienced some of the most traumatic events of my life in the over ten years since.After being continually depressed most of my adult life, I am thankful every day, or at least every time I think about it, how good it is just to be "normal," at least in my mood. I don't think most people understand the absolute black prison life is in a state of clinical depression, or how impossible it seems to do anything at all, and how, even if one does accomplish something, it seems utterly empty and meaningless. Life really does seem like a fate worse than death. About the only plus a totally depressed state has is one is unlikely to complete the act of suicide successfully in such a state.Anyway, it can get better. It may always be somewhere at the back of your mind, but never let it define you.As the message says, thank you for sharing.

There are many personal accounts of dealing with depression and the thoughts of committing suicide.

Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the National Book Award in 2001. It is a powerful book. His father was the main force behind the development of Celexa by Forest Laboratories.

William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness is also a powerful story. Styron connects the onset of his major depression with his abrupt termination of his abuse of alcohol, although Halcion may also have played a role. The links that he draws between his own illness and that of a number of other writers are interesting.

Andrew Solomon is alive and is living a life of doing good. William Styron died of pneumonia at age 81.

It does get better.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

Jez, thank you for sharing your story and you also, Loh. I know how much courage that takes, on-line or otherwise. My niece dealt with suicidal tendencies for most of her adult life, in her case at least partly due to schizophrenia. I always told her she was my hero and I meant it. She fought a decades long fight with courage and a grace I don't think I could have matched. Just the fatigue factor would have done me in, but she hung in there. I'm glad you both have, too.

When I was 18 and finished high school, I left home and didn't talk to my fucked-up parents for almost 3 years. My VW bus broke down on the way to The City, and I was homeless for a while when I got there. Spent some nights in homeless shelters, many more sleeping under the bushes in Golden Gate Park.I looked up the only person I had any connection with who lived there. My grandfather's roommate at Yale, a guy who had been vice president of Wells Fargo Bank, and was about eleventy three years old. Wretched. Unable to walk without a cane. Told me he couldn't get around at all anymore. Couldn't shit when he wanted. Suffering all the time. I was kinda horrified, y'know?Then he said, "But I just want to live forever. I don't care how painful it is, life is such a grand pageant, so goddamned interesting. I always want to see what's coming next, because you just know it's going to be worth seeing."That's the attitude I've had since that day. A 16 year old did commit suicide here recently. We did flowers for his funeral. I told my kids, "If he had bad parents, no matter how bad they were, all he had to do was live two more years and he could leave home like I did. I know he had friends, because a whole bunch of them contributed money for his funeral flowers. I've had some bottom-of-the-barrel times in my life (been homeless 3 times in fact), but I've never considered suicide. No matter how bad things seem, there's one ironclad rule in life: It WILL get better." I hope I'm programming them against suicide.

We all watched the Marine come out to his father on the day when repeal of DADT was implemented. Here is his contribution to the It Gets Better campaign, when he was still forced to hide his face. He tells us what makes him happy, and it has nothing to do with cars or motorcycles. The people he worked with in the Marines knew he was gay at least a week before the repeal.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

My brother committed suicide in 1991 at the age of 27. He had been suffering from schizophrenia for 8 years. He had reacted badly to every medication. He was living in a halfway house after being in the State hospital for 2 years. His action wasn't a cry for help. He made his decision knowingly and not in a depressed or psychotic state. When he died, most of his friends and family felt equal measures of grief and relief. I understand his decision. Most other suicides, not so much.

"[Moderate] doesn't mean you don't have views. It just means your views aren't predictable ideologically one way or the other, and you're trying to follow the facts where they lead and reach your own conclusions."
-- Sen. King (R-ME)

Nevertheless, a tragedy by any measure. I can sorta almost kinda understand the relief. I can feel the grief deep within me. One medical advance I'm hoping will come sooner rather than later -- a cure for schizophrenia.

Nevertheless, a tragedy by any measure. I can sorta almost kinda understand the relief. I can feel the grief deep within me. One medical advance I'm hoping will come sooner rather than later -- a cure for schizophrenia.Gonna be a tough one because it has to do with the way the brain is wired...and who a person fundamentally is as a result.

While Jamey Rodemeyer is still mourned, the cause for which he made his [link]video,[/link] goes on saving lives:

"I want to say...your project saved my life. As I graduated high school, a close friend gave me the It Gets Better book, and it is the one thing that I have always carried with me. It is a source of inspiration for me, and...it's kept me going. Your project has saved my life. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

Nevertheless, a tragedy by any measure. I can sorta almost kinda understand the relief. I can feel the grief deep within me.

One medical advance I'm hoping will come sooner rather than later -- a cure for schizophrenia.I believe this is tricky, because while schizophrenia is a specific set of symptoms, it seems there are multiple and sometimes overlapping causes of schizophrenia. It appears the best outcomes are those where the person was relatively well integrated in the first place, rapidly snapped into schizophrenia as the result of some acute event and then, quite often, snaps back out of it after treatment or even spontaneously.

The worst outcome appears to be when the person was never all that well in the first place, slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia and has a generally flat affect. In that case, the person never really had a "normal" to which to return.

My favorite book on schizophrenia by a survivor is The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut, the son of Kurt Vonnegut. While in this book he endorsed what I feel to be an unproven orthomolecular vitamin therapy, for whatever reason, he managed to return to normal and pursued a career as a pediatrician after his recovery. I think his breakdown may simply have been caused by use of drugs that exacerbated some preexisting condition and getting away from that allowed him to reintegrate.

In any event, it is a very clear and detailed account of a truly hellish and confusing disease process.

We are in a lot better place as far as treating schizophrenia, not so much because the currently available drugs are better at controlling symptoms, but because they have managed to get good therapeutic results without the horrible side effects earlier antipsychotics had. As horrible as schizophrenia is, the early antipsychotics were so awful many patients preferred psychosis or, worse, simply assumed they were being poisoned, which wasn't that delusional really.

The worst outcome appears to be when the person was never all that well in the first place, slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia and has a generally flat affect. In that case, the person never really had a "normal" to which to return.That's actually a big problem. From my own experience, I've had depression since I was 6 years old and that's the thing that' really held back my recovery. Who am I when I am not depressed? What thoughts can I even think that are not bad ones. It's a hard thing to do, and its like relearning how to walk, and really I haven't quite figured it out yet.